Outlook through the solstice certainly not terrible in spite of recent swing and miss

Albany has spent much of the last decade as Mother Nature's favorite snow hole. Not with this most recent storm however and unfortunately it came at our expense as northern Vermont was shut out in spots and on the very short end of the snow stick in the MRV. Here is the map and thanks to the great work of Tomer Borg (@burgwx) for putting these together.

We will continue to enjoy sub-freezing temperatures on the mountain through at least Sunday morning (Dec 8) though valley locations may inch above freezing this Wednesday and Thursday. The snow forecast appears relatively uneventful however. There are two disturbances capable of bringing some snow to northern Vermont but moisture is sparse and we will be heavily dependent on whatever Lake Champlain can provide for us. The first Wednesday night will provide us with about 1-3 and the second arrives as an arctic boundary early Friday appears especially dry and might only be good for a dusting to an inch. Saturday appears to be an excellent visibility day with temperatures in the single numbers in the morning and only near 20 during the afternoon. A milder breeze later Sunday will push temperatures toward the freezing mark in spite of clouds.

The longer range outlook looks a bit muddled today but the muddling is in fact an improvement from two days ago when it appeared as if a tightened Pacific jet stream would simply prevail over everything. We have a mild stretch of weather to contend with early next week, December 9th and 10th with some accompanying wet weather on Tuesday. It is possible that a one day torch pushes temperatures into the 50's during this time frame but it will be short lived with winter making an abrupt return Wednesday.

Both major set of forecast ensembles have moved toward the development of a block in the stream north of Alaska. High latitude blocking of any sort was glaringly absent from the outlook a few days ago and this aforementioned feature will counter a modest tightening of the jet stream in the Pacific. It could very well set the stage for an interesting middle of the month in terms of snow potential though this remains more than a week away. After December 16th, these same forecast ensembles diverge dramatically with the American version showing a full scale ridge west / trough east positive PNA regime while the European counterpart is a lot more mixed. One can just simply look at how the two forecast packages are handling the outlook in Alaska and can easily gauge how different they are.

There is good news in that dissension however since a full-scale torch does not appear to be part of any scenario with the exception of the two day stretch of mild temps early next week.